”If women do not even know that they are underpaid, they cannot take steps to remedy the pay gap” (statement). When addressing this specific issue, President Obama said, “You know, today, women make up about half our workforce, but they still make 77 cents for every dollar a man earns. That is wrong, and in 2014, it’s an embarrassment. Women deserve equal pay for equal work.” His words represent the discrimination and challenges in today’s society that must be resolved. His words call for action and change, but also awareness that the issue exists.

In 2009, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law that allows victims of pay-based discrimination to file a complaint to the government within 180 days of their most recent paychecks. While that laid a foundation for improvement, President Obama works to facilitate more drastic changes. According to the White House official, the first executive order Obama will sign will prohibit and ban “federal contractors from retaliating against employees who choose to discuss their compensation.” It helps people be more conscience of pay-based discrimination and works to eliminate it completely. As the article states, “The second order will ask the secretary of labor to establish new requirements for federal contractors to submit summaries of pay data, including a breakdown of sex and race.” It works to create further checks and balances and helps to avoid unfairness and corruption.

The Constitution and more specifically the Fourteenth Amendment address issues of equality and seem to support the idea of equality among people. While women through the Nineteenth Amendment achieved the same rights as males in society, a struggle for actual equality still exists. I believe in order to abide by the ideas and laws that the Constitution proposes, it is necessary for their to be equality in all categories whether it be social, political, or economic.